According to Noah Lukeman, who wrote The First Five Pages, pacing is the
central nervous systemof
your book and demands the greatest long term concentration. It requires the
writer to retain several hundred pages in their head at once!

So how do you heighten the tension and keep the pace going
strong?

1. Make sure your characters have
enough at stake. If
that other cat lets the first cat sit on his mat, his pride and
territory would be in peril!

You want the reader to blaze through your pages,
look forward to picking up the book again, just to find out how your
protagonist is going to overcome the conflict you’ve written into your story.

2. Delete scenes that slow the pace.
First, the cat stopped for a drink
of water from the community bowl located near the kitchen table. He stared at
the raindrops pelting against the window. Next, he chatted up the other cats in
the house before finally walking over to the other cat’s mat.

If you
find an extraneous paragraph that have nothing to do with moving the story
forward, or that lets the reader know pertinent background information about
the characters, delete it. The
reader will naturally want to skip over waking up, yawning, reporting the
weather, etc. unless it’s necessary for setting the scene, the mood, the
character’s personality or motivation. Even then, keep it brief.

3. Draw out the dramatization. Build
up to a scene. The first
cat circled the other cat's space, taking in the softness and durability of his
mat. He looked over his shoulder to be sure no other copycats watched. He
stepped one paw on the mat and then the other...

This is different than deleting
scenes that slow pace. This is where showing versus telling can help you out. Let
the reader picture the scene through your descriptions without telling them
exactly what’s happening, so it builds anticipation.

4. End chapters on cliff hangers. Just as he was making himself comfy
on his new mat, the first cat heard a drawn-out hiss behind him. His
hiney froze in mid air.

This way, your reader will be dying
to find out what happens next. This is difficult to do for every single
chapter. But as long as the reader’s trying to get to the subsequent scene to
see what’s coming, you’re golden.

5. Ask your betas for help.It's hard to self-edit for pacing
and tension.

They’ll let you know if you need to delete or add word count to ramp up your
story.

Hi Christina!I'm actually reading The First Five Pages right now. That's one of those books I kept hearing about and finally decided to check out for myself. The chapters on Sound and Comparisons are spot on.